les pensées insouciantes

We are all somewhat impervious to new information, preferring the beliefs in which we are already invested. We often ignore new contradictory information, actively argue against it or discount its source, all in an effort to maintain existing evaluations. Reasoning away contradictions this way is psychologically easier than revising our feelings. In this sense, our emotions color how we perceive “facts.”

The simple reality is people feel before they think. And when those feelings are strong enough, facts take a back seat.

David P. Redlawsk, professor of political science and director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University.

On “motivated reasoning.”

Got it?

Save your breath.

Tagged: #EveryDivisiveIssueInTheWorld

P.S. “Motivated Reasoning” would be a great name for a political blog.

nprfreshair:

New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza details President Obama’s response to the ongoing uprisings in the Middle East and explains why the president’s actions — in Egypt and then in Libya — say a great deal about the administration’s foreign policy strategy: ”The hinge of the story of his first term will be the uprising in the Middle East that will allow our foreign policy, to allow our interests and our values to align in a region where they have not been aligned for a very long time.”

Read that again.

Just picking nits, but:

his first term…

Today is April 27, 2011.

Attention NPR and New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza: Election Day is quite a few months away.

↵ Originally from nprfreshair

↵ Reblogged from nationaljournal

The funniest, unintended(?) commentary on Obama’s birth certificate release earlier today:

The poetic juxtaposition of the following two headlines on Drudge this morning:

OBAMA: ‘I’ve got better stuff to do’

FOLLOWED BY:

Heads to Chicago to tape Oprah show

Hilarious.

Meanwhile, 9 American Troops Killed in Afghanistan Today.

[Sigh…]

Horrific video emerges of Taliban fighters stoning couple to death for adultery (via The Daily Mail)

Instead of a content warning, I suggest that you watch and GET SQUEAMISH.

Horrific video footage has emerged of Taliban insurgents stoning a couple to death for alleged adultery in northern Afghanistan.

Hundreds of villagers can be seen on the video standing around as the woman, Siddqa, is buried up to her waist in a four foot hole in the ground.

Two mullahs pass sentence before the crowd begins to throw rocks at her head and body as she desperately tries to crawl free.

You can hear the rocks crack against her skull. You can see blood stain the shroud that covers her head.

But the 19 (25?)-year-old collapses to the ground, covered in blood – but miraculously still alive.

At this point a Taliban fighter shoots her three times in the head with an AK-47. The crowd can be heard shouting allahu akbar as she is killed.

Her lover, Khayyam, is then marched in front of the crowd with his hands tied behind his back.

He is blindfolded with his own tunic and crouches down close to the ground as he tried to protect his body from the stones.

But he is battered to the floor by a barrage of rocks. He can be heard sobbing before eventually falling silent.

The stoning – the first to be documented on film since the Taliban were ousted from power – took place in the district of Dashte Archi, in Kunduz, last August.

Officials said that Siddqa had run away after being sold into an arranged marriage for $9,000 against her will.

Response on the incident from Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid:

“Anyone who knows about Islam knows that stoning is in the Koran, and that it is Islamic law. There are people who call it inhuman - but in doing so they insult the Prophet. They want to bring foreign thinking to this country.”

Just For Reference™

RE: Here are my own recommendations for Election Day…

Delayed post.

Regarding:

peterfeld:

Here are my own recommendations for Election Day. First of all, vote! Second, vote Democratic, wherever you are. Maybe there are some thoughtful Republicans running in your area, but this is not the year to give them a boost. In New York, that means:

Tom DiNapoli, Comptroller. DiNapoli is a political hack who was installed as Comptroller in a backroom deal by the legislature after the corrupt Alan Hevesi was forced to resign. His Republican opponent, Harry Wilson, is considered a basically competent, effective fiscal manager of the sort who rarely runs for office, and many people think we’d be lucky to get someone with his talents to straighten out the fiscal mess in Albany. Still, this is no year to vote Republican. Support the hack Democrat, Tom DiNapoli.

You the least bit sheepish about this one?

The national races, sure. The Dems were playing defense against the GOP wave and voting down the party line was survival strategy (Well, not in New York and California, for the most part, but everywhere else).

The results of this local race, however, given the clusterfuck that is dealing with the state budget, will likely have a greater effect on most New Yorkers in the coming years than any decision the likes of a Schumer or a Weiner (aka, the most appropriately named Rep in Congress!*) will make in this current term.

* - with apologies to my roommate.

Deficit reduction has been a high priority for us. It is our mantra, pay-as-you-go.

Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), at her final press conference as House Speaker, January 4, 2010, four years to the day that she took the gavel in 2007 and pledged “no new deficit spending.” (via FoxNation) h/t @memorandum

Reality:

The numbers tell a different story:

When the Pelosi Democrats took control of Congress on January 4, 2007, the national debt stood at $8,670,596,242,973.04. The last day of the 111th Congress and Pelosi’s Speakership on December 22, 2010 the national debt was $13,858,529,371,601.09 - a roughly $5.2 trillion increase in just four years. Furthermore, the year over year federal deficit has roughly quadrupled during Pelosi’s four years as speaker, from $342 billion in fiscal year 2007 to an estimated $1.6 trillion at the end of fiscal year 2010.

And via HotAir:

And that doesn’t actually tell the whole story, either. The last budget passed by a Republican Congress spent a total of $2.77 trillion, with a deficit just under $200 billion. Democrats took that in FY2010 — their last actual full-year budget — to over $3.8 trillion, an increase of 38% in just three budget cycles. And when the Democrats finally got around to passing pay-go in their fourth and final year in control of the House, they ended up waiving it in almost every instance afterward.

Just For Reference™

From an earlier pos t:

Democrats will often blame this on the continued existence of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. However, the CBO reckons that the federal government will only get $4 trillion over the next ten years if all of the Bush tax cuts expire, as they are set to do on December 31 of this year. That ten-year revenue (which is itself highly debatable) still wouldn’t have covered all of the deficit spending Democrats did while in control of Congress in just four years. In fact, at their rate of deficit spending in three budget cycles, Democrats would add almost $15 trillion to the national debt in ten years:

Republicans in control for 12 years: Added $4.034 trillion (avg $336.17 billion per year)

Republicans in control during Bush era: Added $3.201 trillion (avg $533.5 billion per year)

Democrats in control of Congress during Bush/Obama era: Added $4.603 trillion (avg 1.48 trillion per year)

Democrats did not aim to control spending when they took control of Congress. They aimed to expand government at a historic rate, and they succeeded beyond even their wildest dreams. And what happened when Democrats finally got around to passing pay-go, more than three years later? They made more exceptions to it than bills that actually got the pay-go treatment.

This is exactly why voters can’t trust Democrats on spending, deficits, and taxes.

Again, to those that point to the Hastert years, and reprimanding, ask where the Tea Party-type/fiscal hawks were then — they were at the voting booth. When their elected representatives acted irresponsibly, the electorate called them on it.

The electorate, unsurprisingly, did the same on November 2 of last year.

Conclusion:

The last crop of Republicans on spending: Bad.

The last crop of Democrats on spending: Worse.

The new GOP class took over (just) the House yesterday. We’ll see how they do.

I’m not holding my breath, but we’re all watching you. How ‘bout you surprise us, for a change?

Previously:

Debt Has Increased $5 Trillion Since Speaker Pelosi Vowed, ‘No New Deficit Spending’ in 2007

The real problem: spending, not revenue

Edit: Undo Change — November 2, 2010

I am for doing good to the poor, but…I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed…that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

That heartless asshole, Benjamin Franklin.

In light of North Korea bombing South Korea this week, I’m surprised no one’s posted this yet.

Once again, I give you “The World’s Greatest Speech” from Team America: World Police.

NSFW…if you’re a pussy.

Text:

We’re dicks! We’re reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks.

And the Film Actors Guild are pussies.

And Kim Jong Il is an asshole.

Pussies don’t like dicks because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes. Assholes that just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is that sometimes they fuck too much or fuck when it isn’t appropriate. And it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes pussies can be so full of shit that they become assholes themselves. Because pussies are only an inch and a half away from assholes. I don’t know much about this crazy, crazy world, but I do know this. If you don’t let us fuck this asshole, we’re going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit.

Maybe this India trip will do Obama and the Dems some good.

It worked for The Beatles…

In spite of his supporters’ excitement, his election did not signify a permanent national shift to the left. His attempt to govern from the left accordingly brought a predictable result: The public took away his ability to legislate on domestic affairs. Instead, they moved the country to a position where no one can legislate anything beyond the most carefully negotiated and neutral legislation.

STRATFOR’s George Friedman on how The World Looks at Obama After the U.S. Midterm Election.

His is always rather sobering commentary, and often impossible to disagree with.

More:

Obama comes out of this election severely weakened domestically. If he continues his trajectory, the rest of the world will perceive him as a crippled president, something he needn’t be in foreign policy matters. Obama can no longer control Congress, but he still controls foreign policy. He could emerge from this defeat as a powerful foreign policy president, acting decisively in Afghanistan and beyond. It’s not a question of what he should do, but whether he will choose to act in a significant way at all.

Read the full piece here.

And check out last week’s piece for a flesh-out on what he thinks might be Obama’s strategy for the next two years.

About STRATFOR:

STRATFOR’s global team of intelligence professionals provides an audience of decision-makers and sophisticated news consumers in the U.S. and around the world with unique insights into political, economic, and military developments. The company uses human intelligence and other sources combined with powerful analysis based on geopolitics to produce penetrating explanations of world events. This independent, non-ideological content enables users not only to better understand international events, but also to reduce risks and identify opportunities in every region of the globe.

STRATFOR’s chief executive officer, Dr. George Friedman, is a widely recognized international affairs expert and author of numerous books, including The Next 100 Years (Doubleday, 2009), America’s Secret War (Doubleday, 2005), and The Future of War (Crown, 1996).

STRATFOR members include individuals, FORTUNE 100 corporations, government agencies and other organizations around the world.